This invention relates generally to commercials and, more specifically, to methods and apparatus for automatically scheduling broadcast commercials.
Television (TV) networks broadcast a wide variety of programming often directed to a specific market, for example, talk shows, sports, game shows, and other entertainment shows. Additionally, prime time entertainment shows typically have wide appeal. Networks selling advertising slots to clients sell commercial space by the show on which a commercial will air. A commercial break includes a plurality of advertising slots wherein commercials can be broadcasted (i.e., aired). The exact location in the show that a commercial airs is decided at a later stage, usually close to the airdate of the show. At least one television network uses several criteria to generate a detailed schedule of commercials for each specific show. For example, the criteria can include ensuring that no two commercials promoting competing products from different clients air in the same break. Additionally, since the audience ratings tend to be higher at the start and end of a commercial break than during the middle of the break advertisers generally prefer the first and last positions in a commercial segment, to those in the middle. Finally, TV networks normally promise their clients an equitable rotation of commercials between the positions within a commercial break.
To schedule the commercials and meet the above criteria, the network manually examines the criteria and then schedules the commercials to best meet the criteria. Manually scheduling the commercials, for a large quantity of clients can be a cumbersome and time intensive process. Further, manually scheduling the commercials may lead to errors in the schedule, such as, scheduling two commercials for the same product adjacent to each other during the same commercial break, or scheduling competing products adjacent each other during the same commercial break.